PhDniX's blog

No phonotactic *e?

A while ago I posited the idea that the paradigm for 'foot' in Indo-European might have a phonotactic schwa insertion. Glen Gordon spook out against this, saying it was paradigmatic levelling rather than a phonotactic constraint. I didn't want to believe him, simply because phonotactic constraits are so much nicer than paradigmatic levelling, but I found some examples which shows that he's probably right.

So let us look at the paradigm for 'foot'. We have the root *ped- With a paradigm like this:

Nom. *pṓd-s
Gen. *ped-ós

The ō in the nominative is due to mono-syllabicity of the word. The vocalism of this word is then perfectly acceptable.

The genitive though is slightly more problematic. From the idea of syncope, we'd rather see a word like **pd-ós, which we clearly don't. My idea was then that a *e was inserted (which was previously a schwa), due to phonotactic constraints, after all /pd/ is a rather difficult cluster to pronounce initially, even Greek, known for it's sometimes rather strange initial clusters doesn't allow such a cluster. Glen Gordon argued that this is not so much a phonotactic constraint, but rather the tendency of Indo-European to avoid asyllabic roots alternating with syllabic roots in one paradigm.

At first I did not see why one would assume this, and then I suddenly remembered the root *peth₁- 'to fly'. This root is well attested in many languages, including English (feather). But the Greek word πτερόν 'wing' is the one I'd like to talk about. As we can see, Greek has a perfect zero grade in the root for this word, a Indo-European reconstruction of this word would be:
*pth₁ró-m
By the phonotactic constraint I first proposed such a cluster would be forbidden. I would expect a form **peth₁ró-m, so I have to re-evaluate my theory. I'm not quite feeling into giving into Glen's theory yet, and would like to change my theory a bit;

When there's a initial cluster of two consonants of which one of the two elements is voiced, a schwa is insterted between the two.

I believe Greek agrees with me on this one, since there's no clusters like bd, gd, pd, bt etc. to be found in the Greek language initially. Nevertheless I'm going to have to search for words to disprove me again; If you're feeling in a particularly productive mood, I encourage my readers to do the work for me!

Just a little side not to finish this post of, it might be interesting to know that Sanskrit in fact does have the phonotactic constraint that I posited the first time, the word for 'wing' in Sanskrit is patram पत्रम्. Which is a problematic word as well since it brings up some of Sanskrit's sporadic laryngeal vocalisation, but we'll leave that for some other time.

Sanskrit does allow such clusters medially though. The third person plural perfect in Vedic Sanskrit of patati पतति 'to fall/fly' is paptuḥ पप्तुः While in Classical Sanskrit by a bizarre analogy from sad- 'to sit' it became petuḥ पेतुः. To sit in 3ppl perf. is seduḥ < *sazduḥ < *sasduḥ. This e-vocalism rather than a medial CC cluster was generalised to all reduplicating perfects that have identical initial reduplication (Labials, dentals and fricatives). Seems like Sanskrit wasn't particularly fond of the medial zero-grade roots after a while either.

Not present heightening after all?

Last post I started telling you about how the present seemed to be some kind of vowel heightening form the perfect; due to its type of suffixes. In retrospect I consider this to be very wrong. I sometimes have days I try to merge everything with everything; which turns out wrong.

I still think the reduplication was originally reduplicated with the same vowel. I just think that the *e found in the present stem somehow motivated this pretonic-epenthetic-like schwa to be heightened by this *e or maybe it's a form of dissimilation (continuing on the idea that the present *e was originally a schwa as well).

Then we have two types of verbal stems, those with *e as the root vowel and those with *o. I can't stop thinking about how this *i/*e alternation might somehow be the clue to proving Pre-Indo-European syncope. Because, despite it being fairly obvious to me, from a logical point of view it's very hard to prove that the Genitive of 'father' ph₂trós originally had an unaccented *ə in between the *t and the *r, quite simply because it's not there.

Now if indeed the reduplication reflex of *ə before another *ə was *i, and this can be proven; we have definite proof that a Ø-grade used to have a *ə there.

Let me explain:
the verb 'to give' *deh₃
In full grade, that is in the singular we find
*di-déh₃-mi
while in the plural we find
*di-dh₃-més

If the preceeding Pre-IE *ə (> PIE*e) does indeed influence the heightening of *ə to *i, then also in the plural the *ə must have been there to cause this heightening.

So my job right now is twofold: Either find convincing proof that this heightening is true by collecting a big collection of reduplicating verbs in Sanskrit/Greek and maybe Tocharian; Or proof that all pretonic *ə followed by a *ə are heightened to *i.

And this is what I've been doing lately, collecting examples to prove this; so far, not incredibly fruitful though.

On a completely different note:
Some sharp readers may notice my self-contradiction. I'm currently placing reduplication in a pre-Indo-European stage, while previously I held a big argumentation that reduplication was an exclusive feature of Greek/Indo-Aryan. You're absolutely right please forgive me. I'm currently only placing the reduplication in such an early stage because I think it might work; which would mean I'd have to review my previous theories.
 
I now believe that loss of reduplication is far easier than I considered it before though. We have to realise that due to Haplology ( Or Haplogy? ;-) ) things like reduplication have a tendency of disappearing. Even within Greek we find Haplology *αμφι-φωρα > αμφωρα 'amphora (litt. that which is carried on both sides)'.

Let's hope this isn't a dead end. Even if it is, it'll be interesting to research.

Present vowel heightening

One of the greatest problems with Indo-European, is that the common reconstruction of the language's  phonology is typologically unlikely to impossible. Lately I've been focussing on the vocalic system.

The general idea is that there were two or four vowels depends on how you treat *i and *u; For the sake of this article it will be easier to view it as four vowels. The four vowels are *e, *o, *i, *u. This system is unlikely; if anything we'd at least expect the vowel *a. There is also some reason to believe that there might be the vowel *a; but the actual phonetic distribution of this vowel is so incredibly small, that the system is still extremely unlikely.

I'd rather not deny this system never existed; But I'd like to find an older, more logical system behind all this. My 'gut' tells me that *o was *a at some point, especially considering Hittite having /a/ for *o. A system like *a, *e, *i, *u. Though a lot less unlikely still doesn't quite feel right. To account for seemingly random *e/o and *i/e alternations in some situation we might like to see a *ə. And I'd want to assume that then all later *e's are in fact secondary developments from *a or *ə.

So that's a lot of assumptions; now let us take a look at some of the things that might agree with me. First know that, as Hittite seems to indicate, Perfect and Present used to be two completely unrelated categories of verbs, rather than forms of one verb system. Therefore a Perfect and Present can both be in the present tense and past tense; as odd as that may sound.

Now let's look at the reduplicated forms of both a present and a perfect (I believe pre-Hittite-Indo-European did have reduplication). I only gave first, second and third singular, and third plural respectively; With the 1st and 2nd plural I'm not very confident on how archaic those forms are; They don't quite function like the rest.
 
Present                 Perfect        
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-m+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-s+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-t+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰh₁-ént+i         *de-dh₃-ér     

There's several remarkable things about these two paradigms. First the Present
 has e-grade in the root, while the perfect has o-grade. But not only that, the present has a reduplication with *i, while the perfect has a reduplication with *e. Last but not least, the perfect has three endings ending in *e; while according to the rules of syncope, we wouldn't like to see final *e's or *o's at all. And in general we do not wish to see the vowels *e and *o outside of the accent at all. Nevertheless they're there, it'd be crazy to deny that.

Now let's look at both version of these forms as I would reconstruct them in their Pre-Syncope-Indo-European.
Present                  Perfect       
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-me+i        *de-dóh₃-h₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-sa+i         *de-dóh₃-th₂e
*dʰi-dʰéh₁-to+i          *de-dóh₃-e
*dʰi-dʰeh₁-énta+i        *de-doh₃-éra 

Somehow though the *e's I reconstruct for the perfect did not syncopate like the one in say *-me did. This brought me to think that these vowels might be of a fundamental different nature than the normal *e. Let's assume that this vowel is *ə

For the sake of unification we'd like the reduplication vowels to originally be from the same source as well. And dare I say it, I'd personally feel for unifying the root vowels as well, into an *a from the *i,*u,*a,*ə-stage of Pre-Indo-European. One again quite a lot of assumptions but let's look at the paradigm first before I continue.

Present                   Perfect        
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-me+i        *də-dáh₃-h₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-sV+i         *də-dáh₃-th₂ə
*dʰə-dʰáh₁-to+i          *də-dáh₃-ə
*dʰə-dʰah₁-éntV+i      *də-dah₃-érV 

Note how I'm now using *V for unknown vowel because the previously used placeholder vowel <a> is now being used for an actual *a. Also note how in endings -me, -to and -érV I'm still writing the previous' stage's vowels. I do not pretend to know what these forms would be in this stage of Indo-European, but writing them all down as V would be silly, as we have significantly more data what they become in a later then the vowels I've denoted as V. And since *e nor *o overlap with the proposed system, they're not in the way.

Right so now onto the forms; what can we say? You'd almost like to assume that the *+i caused i-umlaut on all vowels; but this is sadly impossible for the secondary endings (without *i) also display e-grade, and it would be too far a stretch to assume that this was analogy. The other difference is that the all Present endings only have non-ə vowels for endings. Somehow this seems to have heightened the *ə and *a to *i and *e respectively.

Now sharp readers might want to point out the -érV is also a non-ə ending. They would be right, but realise that the vocalisme of the root becomes Ø in modern Indo-European, so there is a chance that the pre-syncope vowel there was actually *e and not *o, as we would expect from the present.

This heightening of the vowel because of non-high-vowels is very difficult to support phonetically though. I have tried to fit in some syncopated *i somewhere to account for the vowel-heightening, but this would be too far fetched. It almost looks like a sort of anti-vowel-harmony, where the vowels preceding the suffix disharmonise with the suffix vowel. I'm curious if anyone knows such a language, please tell me if you do.

I do not pretend to know how this will solve itself; nor am I sure if I'm thinking in the right direction, I'm going to need more proof (maybe in the nominals?) and more plausible soundshifts to be able to support this theory fully myself. But I just decided to put down my thoughts here, so that people can think along. So please any thoughts or questions are welcome.